Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration

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When in April 2009, 112 child soldiers who had served with the rebel National Liberation Forces (FLN) were freed following the signing of a cease-fire agreement between the FLN and the government of Burundi, the existence of modern-day child soldiers was brought forcefully into the international spotlight. Worldwide, armed forces and nongovernmental armed groups recruit and exploit children, who are defined under international law as those under 18 years of age. Though the number of child soldiers is unknown—many child recruiters successfully hide their actions, and some children lie about their age in order to join political struggles—it is estimated that at any time, there are approximately 250,000 child soldiers, many of whom are girls. Although most child soldiers are teenagers, the recruits also include children as young as six or seven years of age. Children may also be born into armed groups. For example, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which abducted many children and fought against the government of Uganda, maintained military camps in southern Sudan, where its leader, Joseph Kony, sired many children who subsequently became soldiers.

A boy in Mogadishu, Som., is armed with an ammunition belt and a rocket-propelled grenade used by Islamist fighters in attacks against the government in July 2009.Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP

A child soldier stands at the front line of combat in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in November 2008.Finbarr O'Reilly—Reuters/Landov

Armed forces and groups recruit children for diverse reasons. Commanders often select children because they are available in large numbers and can be recruited with impunity, because they can be fashioned into effective fighters, and because commanders know that they can manipulate children easily by employing terror tactics and offering incentives for bravery and initiative in combat. Armed with small lightweight weapons, such as AK-47 assault rifles, even young children can be effective fighters. They may also serve as spies who can slip behind enemy lines without suspicion. Teenagers are often sought for their size and strength, their willingness to take risks that many adults would avoid, and their political consciousness. In Sri Lanka the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam fought government forces in part by recruiting teenage girls to serve as suicide bombers.

The Recruitment of Children.

Child recruitment is contextual and may involve force or decisions made by the child. The LRA forcibly recruited as many as 60,000 children by abducting and subjugating them into obedience through a regime of terror. To deter escape the LRA forced abducted children to surround recaptured escapees and beat them to death. Forced recruitment was also used in Sierra Leone, where the opposition group Revolutionary United Front forced young people at gunpoint to join and often required children to kill members of their own villages or families.

Some children decide to join armed groups, but their choices may not be “voluntary,” since they are made in desperate circumstances and involve a mixture of “push” and “pull” factors. In Colombia, for example, a boy who has been abused in his home may leave and seek an alternate “family” in the form of an armed group. In other countries youths have been lured by propaganda and an ideology of liberation into believing that by becoming soldiers, they will help to liberate their people. In Rwanda young Hutu were recruited into a youth militia (the Interahamwe) and were taught that Tutsi had to be eliminated; more than 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, were killed in the 1994 genocide.

Other pull factors may include retribution, money, family ties, and power. In Liberia some children join armed groups in an effort to avenge wrongs, such as the killing of one’s parents by government forces. Children may also be eager to earn money that they can send home to support impoverished families. In northern Afghanistan children frequently joined the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban because their fathers, brothers, or uncles were members and because they regarded fighting as a matter of family honour and village protection. Some children seek power and prestige. Many children report that because they carry a gun and wear a uniform, they are treated with a level of respect that they never enjoyed as civilians.

Inside armed groups, children play diverse roles. A common myth is that all child soldiers are fighters, when in fact many recruits serve as porters, cooks, bodyguards, and domestics, among other roles. Another myth is that all child soldiers are boys. In conflicts in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, girls were recruited to serve not only as fighters but also as sex slaves, whose refusal to provide sex often led to severe punishment or death.

The Reintegration of Formerly Recruited Children.

Because they have been socialized into lives as soldiers, child soldiers may themselves become a means of perpetuating violence and armed conflict. To break cycles of violence, a key priority has been to demobilize child soldiers and help them to transition or reintegrate into civilian life. Typically, this is done through a process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Having turned in their weapons (disarmament), child soldiers are demobilized by being officially stood down from armed groups. They are reintegrated through rehabilitation and work with families and communities to help them find a place in civilian society.

Rehabilitation requires attention to mental health issues that cause distress and impede reintegration. In countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, where commanders had plied child soldiers with drugs to make them fearless, many former child soldiers developed problems of substance abuse. In other countries a minority of former child soldiers develop clinical problems, such as depression, anxiety, and trauma, particularly the post-traumatic stress disorder that can arise following extreme events, including exposure to deaths or active engagement in killing. Effective treatment of these problems requires specialized supports, such as counseling by well-trained psychologists or psychiatrists, few of whom are available in war zones. In addition, mental health issues may have indigenous roots. In Angola, for example, former child soldiers were terrified because they believed that they were haunted by the unavenged spirits of the people they had killed. In this case, rather than counseling, the children benefit from the services of a traditional healer, who conducts a cleansing ritual to remove their spiritual pollution.

It is often everyday social issues, however, that cause the greatest distress and the most formidable barriers to reintegration. To rectify family separation it is essential, when possible, to reunify former recruits with their families and to manage family conflicts. Nearly all former child soldiers struggle because they have lost years of education and lack the income needed to start a family or the social skills to assume the role of mother or father. Some develop unruly behaviour, while others have difficulty meeting expectations associated with ordinary living. Many former child soldiers—particularly girls—are stigmatized and called “rebels” or are viewed as aggressive troublemakers. Media accounts sometimes support these stereotypes by referring to former child soldiers as a “Lost Generation.”

Effective reintegration is possible through holistic community-based supports. It is important to mobilize communities to support the livelihood, acceptance, and education of former child soldiers and to activate protection mechanisms that guard against rerecruitment or retaliation. Nevertheless, reintegration efforts are not sufficient by themselves; equal efforts should be given to prevention, particularly to ending the impunity that allows recruitment to continue.

Recognition by the international community of the serious nature of enlisting children in warfare was highlighted in 2009 when warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo became the first person to be tried by the International Criminal Court. He was accused of having committed war crimes (recruiting children as soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The UN was also at the forefront of strengthening international standards against child recruitment and urged governments to ratify the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict. The optional protocol, which was adopted in 2000 to augment the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), raises the minimum age of participation in hostilities from 15 years of age to 18. These efforts will succeed, however, only if all countries agree to abide by the optional protocol and thus safeguard the world’s children.

Michael Wessells is Professor of Clinical Population and Family Heath, Columbia University, New York City; he is the author of Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection.Michael Wessells